God's Power vs. My Weakness

I remember pitching quite a fit in the doctor’s office as a child. My mom still talks about it at dinner parties when people need a laugh. Without exaggeration, it took three nurses, the doctor, and my mother to hold me down… for eye drops. I simply didn’t want them.

I have been a little sick for the past few days. The doctor told me it was bronchitis, so I’m sure I’ll be fine soon. But, while I waited on the doctor in my little personal examination room, I was able to overhear just about everything that went on. One thing caught my attention most of all. It was a little girl who was telling her mother that she didn’t want a shot. Her mother must not have heard her the first time, because the little girl repeated it over and over. The phrase, “I don’t want a shot,” got louder and louder with every repetition. At one point, they must have gone into a room because the little girl’s voice was muffled all of a sudden. But, then, her sweet but desperate voice turned into a scream of one who had been betrayed. From that point on, she cryed, “I want my Daddy!” Something tells me she didn’t want that shot.

I waited and waited. I didn’t have a watch with me, but it seemed like I had waited for an hour. I began to pick up on a conversation outside the examination room door. It was the doctor (who I had been waiting on) and a personality-filled drug-rep. That drug-rep talked to the doctor for what seemed like 30 minutes. I was in agony. All I could think of was, “I wish that drug-rep would leave so that I could see the doctor.” Now, I have a friend who is a drug-rep, so I mean no offense to drug-reps around the world… but have some decency! I just wanted to see the doctor in a timely fashion.

I can look back on my life and see great value in my defeats. I haven’t been given everything I wanted. My parents didn’t hand me a candy bar every time I wanted one in the check-out line. My teachers didn’t give me a good grade just because I smiled at them. My doctor doesn’t rush to my examination room as soon as I sit down just because I want him to. People who love me don’t fix all of my problems for me even when they know I might experience a little (or a lot of) pain. I have been defeated over and over in my life and I am better because of it.

Paul had a similar problem in II Corinthians 12. Paul speaks about a “thorn in his side.” Who knows what that “thorn” was? Maybe Paul struggled with a particularly difficult sin. Maybe Paul had a physical problem. We can ask Paul some day. Whatever it was, Paul asked God over and over to remove the thorn. God would not remove it. There was purpose in His refusal… there was purpose in Paul’s defeat.

Do you think there is purpose in those eye drops that I didn’t want? You bet there was! Was there a purpose for the shot that the little girl didn’t want? You know there was! Was there purpose in my having to wait so long to see the doctor? Probably not, but in all these cases, including Paul’s, we were defeated. Here is what God says to the defeated: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

Do you see? God desires our defeatedness. Bring Him your broken life, your failed attempts, your everyday stumblings, and EXPECT His power to be made perfect through all of them. God’s grace is sufficient. Now, that’s something that I want. God has already said that I can have it. Thanks, God.